GlaxoSmithKline

At GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a leading worldwide pharmaceutical company, a team of scientists uses dry blood spots instead of plasma for pharmacological testing.

In this method, a small amount of blood is pipetted onto a card, then dried, and sent for bioanalysis.

Less need for blood means less demand on animals and humans which equals major ethical and economic advantages. The cards are also much easier to ship and store than plasma.

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But the minimum volume of blood also presented challenges to GSK in achieving the proper level of sensitivity required for some methods and compounds.

What to do?

The answer arrived in two instrument platforms from Waters: the TRIZAIC UPLC System with nanoTile Technology and the Xevo TQ-S. Independently, each achieved multiple increases in sensitivity over traditional platforms. But when GSK scientists coupled the two Waters instruments, they saw increases in sensitivity jump hundreds time greater than what they had been previously achieving.